[bold] Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, two longtime hosts and Donald Trump allies, have told friends they’re concerned they could be sacked next, [/bold] according to two sources familiar with the situation.

According to people with knowledge of the matter, executives have recently held high-level discussions about Fox Business host Bartiromo’s future at the company. In recent years, the host became a mouthpiece for Trump, propping up conspiracy theories and peddling lies about the 2020 election. Those falsehoods found their way into a Dominion Voting Systems filing in the company’s mega-lawsuit against Fox. The filing pointed to Bartiromo’s Nov. 8 interview with Trump-aligned attorney, Sidney Powell, to discuss “voting irregularities” — on-air programming that contrasted sharply with the host’s Dominion deposition statements, in which Bartiromo said the email underpinning Powell’s claims was “nonsense.”

Pirro, an ardent Trump supporter whose claims about election fraud were highlighted by Dominion in its legal filings, has also been telling confidants she’s worried she’ll be shown the door, according to one of the people familiar with the situation.

It’s not just hosts who are anxious. Other sources at and close to the network say that, in the wake of Carlson’s ouster, some Fox brass have grilled certain staff about whether they or their teams had recently blabbed to the press about Carlson’s abrupt dismissal.

The grilling has not stopped a steady stream of Carlson-related leaks, and Fox staff are taking steps to avoid getting caught communicating without outside sources. Several staffers have taken additional measures to shield their communications with outside media, changing journalist contacts to fake names in case they receive a call in the presence of management or “their spies,” as one Fox employee describes. (By “spies,” the employee was referring to personnel suspected of “snitch[ing]” to upper management about their colleagues’ alleged infractions in order to climb the ladder.)

While the tension inside the building rises, the network’s ratings — Fox News’ perpetual rebuttal to criticism — have declined sharply. On Wednesday, when guest host Brian Kilmeade slid into Carlson’s former chair, he drew 1.33 million viewers, down 56 percent from Tucker’s draw a week earlier, according to the Associated Press. Kilmeade’s numbers also put the network in an unfamiliar position: Second, behind liberal-leaning MSNBC.

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In the days since, the reported explanations for the sudden termination have included issues connected to the settled, wildly expensive Dominion-Fox lawsuit, the Abby Grossberg allegations, and an alleged plethora of so-far unpublished and “highly offensive” remarks Carlson made about network senior staff that triggered a “crisis” among the board of directors, according to The New York Times. Moreover, The Wall Street Journal reported that Fox News attorneys had discovered “the time he called a senior Fox News executive the c-word.” ...

But for now, it’s unclear where Fox’s onetime superstar will head next. Carlson was booted from the channel with a committed following that, to some extent or another, appears ready to go where he leads them. The coveted 8 p.m. time slot at Fox News helped grant Carlson not just to a level of media prominence, but one of actual political and policy influence in the GOP elite. His preferences could help Republican primary campaigns get over the finish line. During and following the Trump presidency, Carlson has had the ear of the leader of the Republican Party. And for years of Tucker Carlson Tonight’s run, powerful conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill “lived in fear” — as numerous Fox sources, political operatives, and GOP members of Congress have phrased it — that the host would come after them during his evening broadcast. At times, these politicians would bend over backwards simply to appease Carlson’s whims and grievances.